If you go down in the woods today
by Tea for Lupin
Summary: 00Q. Fairytale AU where MI6 is responsible for hunting down monsters, Q is not a normal human, and James Bond is occasionally willingly lost in the woods. NOW COMPLETE!
1. A bloody dead tree

The fallen tree was a soft riot of green moss and yellow lichens, incipient with toadstools. James stared at it without really seeing. He took a deep breath, released it slowly. A chance to be still, and not think. Not think, without the aid of a bottle of Scotch, for once. Such a novelty. He should try it more often, he supposed.

A quiet footfall; another breathing body beside him, seated on the long flat rock; another pair of feet in the damp leaves. James did not turn his head. _Jesus_. Even this far into the woods there was never any peace.

The body spoke with a young man's voice, cultured, careful. 'It always makes me feel a bit melancholy. Beautiful old tree like that, ignominiously overgrown, consumed, broken down into soil...' A little sigh; James ground his teeth and with difficulty kept from rolling his eyes. 'The inevitability of time, don't you think? What do you see?'

'A bloody dead tree.' James wanted to be angry, but found instead he was only tired. Pulling up the hood of his red coat against the cold afternoon, he stood. 'Excuse me.'

'007.' The name was impossible, but it had been spoken into the hushed green air nonetheless. 'I'm your new Quartermaster.'

James sank back down onto the rock. 'You must be joking.'

'Why—because I'm not wearing a cassock?' The voice was dryly amused. At last, James turned to look at its owner; took in the thin face, the wild hair, the green eyes. He knew what he had already known from the moment the young man had sat down beside him. It was what they trained and paid him for, after all.

'Because you're a werewolf,' he answered, flatly.

The flicker of a twitch of those red, red lips. 'Oh, you are good. But my bloodline is hardly relevant.'

'Your competence is.'

This time, a sudden show of short sharp teeth. 'And by 'competence' I imagine you mean my ability to keep my … disorder … under control.' The smile had never made it to Q's eyes. 'Don't underestimate me, 007. On a professional level—or a personal one.'

'Or what? You'll bite me?' James' hand was swift to his knife but Q was, unimaginably, quicker; pinning James' hands with his own so that rock scraped grey against the bones of James' wrists.

'I wouldn't have to. You come here,' he said, gesturing with his head to indicate the trees tall around them, 'and you think you know this place, know the paths that will lead you safe to M's little gingerbread cottage in the heart of the forest. You'll make your report and then you'll go back home.' His grip tightened; James held very still. '_I live here_,' Q breathed, his hair trailing across James' cheek like tree-shadow.

'Oh?' James allowed himself the bitterness. 'Then what do you need me for?'

Q relinquished his hands as suddenly as he had seized them. 'Because, every now and then, a throat needs to be cut.'

'That's beneath you, is it?'

'My talents lie elsewhere.' Q's eyes were savage in the shaft of late sunlight.

_I'll wager they do_, James thought to himself. Out loud, he said, 'Who else knows?'

'M.'

'If she trusts you, I suppose I can. Q.'

'007.' This time when Q took his hand, offered, James could feel the pulse jumping against his fingers, brief and thrilling.

'These are for your next mission.' From an inner pocket of his coat Q produced a flat box, stark and unadorned. 'Do try and bring them back in one piece.'

James glanced inside and snapped the lid back down. 'An iron knife and a tinderbox? It's hardly Christmas, is it?'

'What did you expect, an exploding quill?' There was a definite smirk on Q's face now; he seemed to have relaxed. 'We don't really go in for that sort of thing any more.' He rose and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. The afternoon was fading fast to twilight and there was a greyness gathering on the ground. Looking down at James Q gave him a last curt nod. 'Good luck, 007. And remember—don't stray off the path.'

James felt himself grin, feral under the red hood. 'Not without you, Q. Not without you.'

But the young man had already disappeared.


	2. Why are you still here

Q laid the trail of breadcrumbs and the Rat was taken down, but not before James had passed through fire and ice only to have M die in his arms, bleeding out from the arrow wound as Skyfall burning flickered over their skin with a dreadful orange light.

* * *

Q checked over the equipment one last time before packing it into the familiar box and handing it to R. 'Deliver this to 002, please R—it's just standard issue, she'll know what to do with it. No further instructions.' R nodded and left, winking cheerfully at James who was lounging in what could now be called his usual spot in Q Branch: against the one segment of wall that was covered only in sigilled posters, a narrow gap between shelves of esoteric ingredients in their faceted bottles.

He watched now as Q measured grains of yellow powder into a small crucible: one, two, three, four.

'Why are you still here, 007?'

James raised an eyebrow. 'Am I bothering you?'

It seemed that Q was going to ignore his question. James shrugged slightly and watched as the young man added a few silvery drops of liquid to the powder in the crucible, turned up the flame beneath it, and stirred the mixture for a few moments, counting under his breath. With a nod of satisfaction he bottled the resulting green syrup and tucked it carefully into a velvet-lined box.

Then: 'Yes, 007,' Q said, walking over to place the box on a shelf near James' head. He set it down with an exquisite carefulness that spoke a singing tension in every line of his thin frame. Folding his arms over his chest and looking at the agent for the first time that morning since James had returned his equipment, Q continued, 'Since you ask, _yes_. You are bothering me. You are here in Q Branch much, much more frequently than necessary for pre- and post-mission briefings. I am reliably informed that you have spent more time in Q Branch in the last six months than you did in your entire career up to this point.' He drew a deep breath and went on, quick and clipped, before James could interrupt. 'I get the impression, from your continual watchful presence, that you don't trust me.'

James blinked, genuinely taken aback. 'Don't _trust_ you? Q, you know how much I bloody well trust you. Christ, as if I have any choice out there in the field, anyway. But you've never led me a step wrong—never. And none of the other agents have any complaints either—well, apart from when they break one of your favourite toys and you won't give them a new one.'

But Q's lips were set in a thin red line and he did not smile.

'…That's not it, though, is it.' The realisation hit James with a suddenness that knocked the breath from him. 'You actually don't trust _me_. You think I'm here keeping an eye on you. Because I know.' The look on Q's face was all the answer that he needed. 'I can't be the only one. You're telling me not a _single_ one of the other Double-Os has sensed it? Anyway, it must be in your file, M's eyes only—'

With the very faintest hint of a rueful smirk, Q shook his head.

James looked at him with a new-found level of respect. '_Shit_, Q. I don't believe it. M—_this_ M—doesn't know what you are?'

Q's eyes were surprisingly raw and green but his voice was thoroughly matter of fact. 'I've told you before, Bond—I'm the best at what I do.' With a twist of his mouth he added, 'And so are you, apparently.'

'God help us,' James said with feeling, 'if you ever go over to the monsters' side.'

Q flinched as if he had been slapped, and James cursed himself inwardly for his clumsy words. For the mask came down over the young Quartermaster's face, schooling it into the expression of calm competence, bordering on arrogance, which Q customarily wore.

'Well, 007,' he said coolly, 'if I may return to my original question—why the bloody hell are you still here, if it's not to make sure I'm not on the monsters' side?'

James sighed. 'I suppose,' he said, 'I've been working up the courage to ask you out for a picnic in the woods.'


	3. What do you take me for

The picnic, it turned out, would have to wait.

James rounded a corner carefully with Q's voice in his ear. 'Cerberus to your right, fifty paces. You'd better take it out.'

'Seems a shame,' James grunted into the commlink medallion around his neck, bringing down the beast with a well-aimed crossbow bolt to its middle head. 'Would've made a nice pet for you.' He reloaded and kept on running down the stone corridor.

'All right, now use the phial I gave you to neutralise the firewall. The weapons cache is behind it, shouldn't be hard to locate. I've got eyes on you, but I should warn you that I can't scry through the firewall, so I'm afraid I can't tell whether there's anything else in there right now. You'll have exactly two minutes from when it goes down to acquire the cache and get back out, so do try to keep your arse in gear, won't you, 007?'

The corridor ended abruptly in a dancing wall of orange flame. Even standing well back from it James was sweating in the brunt of its radiant heat. He drew the phial from his belt pouch and looked at it dubiously. 'This had better work, Q.'

'Of course it will work, what do you take me for?' The Quartermaster sounded thoroughly offended. James grinned briefly to himself. Well, that was one mission accomplished, anyway. He edged closer, eyes slitted against the force of the firewall; the sweat evaporated from his skin almost as soon as it formed. When he was as close as he could possibly bear, he uncorked the tiny bottle and hurled its contents into the flames.

They shot from orange to white and back again, and though they still hung there like a shimmering curtain the heat was gone; so great was the difference that James staggered as if caught by a gust of cold wind. He gathered himself swiftly and ran through into the chamber behind.

'One minute forty seconds,' Q said.

'Christ, Q, there's ten of them.' James began placing the dragon eggs into the sheepskin-lined satchel he wore over his shoulder.

'More than we thought, then. M will be pleased. Or not. One minute six seconds.'

'On my way out.' Bond passed back through the illusion of the firewall and set off at a steady run, clutching the satchel with one hand to keep it from bumping against him too much. Past the limp form of the Cerberus, black paws still; around the corner and back towards the stairwell. Miraculously, no one appeared to challenge him from the halls that branched off the main corridor. Maybe he would get out of here without having to kill anyone else.

'Good thing those eggs aren't especially breakable,' Q observed drily when the satchel collided with the metal bannister as James hurled himself up the stairs two at a time. James gritted his teeth but saved his breath. His hand was on the cold metal of the door, about to push it open, when Q said, suddenly sharp, 'Bond, wait.' James paused, feeling his heart hammer in his chest.

'Vexing,' said Q. 'We've missed the window between the guard rounds and this fellow is about to see the corpse of the one you dispatched before, in—well, about now, actually.'

James dropped the crossbow and pulled his knife just as the door was yanked open. He made quick but quiet work of the incoming guard and tossed his body down the stairs, grabbed his crossbow and slammed the door behind him just as the first sound of pursuit came from below.

'Calling my extraction team now,' he panted, scrabbling in his belt pouch for the tinderbox. Flint struck steel and amidst the shower of sparks appeared the dog with eyes the size of supper plates. James grabbed onto the rough short fur at its neck and swung up onto its back, flattening himself down as much as possible. An arrow whistled past his ear, but the dog took off at an extraordinary pace, quickly outdistancing their pursuers. It made its way up and onto the rooftops of the city, nothing but a darker shadow moving against the night sky.

'It seems you're in the clear, 007.'

'Good.' James sat up a little straighter and felt the wind strike his face; the night was not cold, but the dog's speed lent the air a keen bite. 'Thanks, Q.'

'Based on your current velocity, estimated time of arrival at Headquarters is twenty-three-hundred-forty hours. I'll let M know—' James could hear the undercurrent of amusement in Q's voice '—that the mission went considerably more smoothly than expected.'

'Of course it did, what do you take me for?' James retorted, and was rewarded by a soft chuckle from the Quartermaster.

* * *

Thanks to fromthewildwood for the idea of the tinderbox. All other mishmash of fantasy elements, technology and terrible puns is my own.


	4. Lead into gold

'Damn it, Q—how far in are we going?' James paused, looking around warily.

The Quartermaster glanced back over his shoulder, lips quirking into a half-smile. 'Feeling nervous?'

James stood his ground. 'Uneasy.' He gestured at the trees that rose around them, tall and dense enough that scarcely any of the late spring sun filtered through the canopy; the understorey was rendered into a dreamy verdant twilight. 'You know this is enemy territory, for me.'

'Oh yes,' Q said lightly. 'I know.' He closed the few paces between them, standing close enough that James could feel Q's breath on his own cheek. 'I also know that you are armed to the teeth, and you know that _I_ am much more dangerous than I appear—so let's be frank: the only real hazard, to either of us, is from the other.' He cocked his head, green eyes bright with a light that sent heat rushing straight to James' groin. 'But I don't think that's really why we're here.'

In answer James laced his hands into the thick tangle of Q's hair, and felt the other man's fingers slide around, warm and possessive, to cup the back of his neck. It was not a gentle kiss; but with Q gentle kisses were something James neither expected nor desired.

'In a hurry, are we?' he murmured with a slight smirk as Q's free hand wandered down purposefully to the waistband of his trousers; then he gasped as Q slipped his hand inside and took hold of his already-erect cock.

'I've wanted you since the day I first met you.' Q's words were little more than a whisper against James' skin. 'I see no merit in delaying gratification any longer—do you?'

Well. When he put it like that.

*  
Later, Q tore hungrily into the bread and cheese while James leaned back on one arm, legs stretched lazily in front of him, drinking the wine they had also brought with them.

'How do you manage it?' he asked. 'Manage to hide it, I mean. What you are.'

Q rolled his eyes, but his words were not as hostile as they could have been. 'I haven't made it to where I am today by divulging my secrets to all and sundry, Bond, especially not to agents of MI6.'

James raised one hand in a gesture of surrender. 'It was just a question, Q.'

Q said, 'Hmmm,' and reached for the bottle of wine. He took a long swallow, and James watched the pulse beating in the column of Q's throat. He wanted to touch it. He held back.

'I can tell you this much, I suppose,' Q conceded after a few moments' silence, broken only by the sound of some wild animal—a deer, thought James—crashing through the trees somewhere behind them. 'The _taint_—' his lips twisted into a sneer at the word '—goes back a long way in my family; but I was the first one to manifest symptoms in several generations. My mother... managed things... when I was young. Kept it hidden. Then she died. My father married again. My stepmother—well, let's just say that she was not sorry to have an excuse to send me off with the Huntsman.'

'Bitch.'

'Oh please,' Q said viciously, 'don't pretend you wouldn't have done the same. Have you forgotten your profession?'

James glared at him. 'I never forget my profession.'

'Then shut up.'

James took back the wine and drank, pointedly.

'I don't know why the Huntsman spared my life,' Q went on, with his hair very black and his lips very red against his white skin, 'but he did. Eventually I found my way to one of the underground organisations—'

'Those bloody dwarves,' James muttered under his breath.

'Those bloody dwarves, as you say,' Q agreed with equanimity, 'and I think that's all you really need to know, don't you?' He ate some more cheese.

'And why did you decide to become an alchemist?' James asked, reaching for the bread.

Q had stretched out his hand for it at the same time; they paused, fingers barely brushing against fingers, for a long beat. At last Q sat back, and ran his tongue over his lips before drawing in a deep breath and letting it out in a slow quiet sigh.

'Because,' he answered, 'I thought that if I could be transformed into... that... Well. I need to believe it's possible to turn lead into gold, as well.'


	5. Bramble-cage

If James thought that his desire for the Quartermaster might be exorcised after their first dalliance in the woods, he could not have been more wrong. Nor did Q lose interest, and to James' dark amusement he found himself both lured and pursued; an exquisite dance that Q led, deeper and deeper over moss and leaf-fall, into the beating forest of the heart. They came together, when they could, in a clash of tongues and teeth and half-breathed epithets; no quarter given, none asked.

James was returning from a supposedly routine contact with a new informant, whose information had been of some interest but nothing earth-shattering, when he spotted the three men tailing him closely. _Set-up_, he realised immediately, and pulled the tinderbox from his belt pouch. It was knocked from his hand as the biggest of the three slammed into him, cracking James' head against the hard cobblestones. James managed to buck the man off and hauled himself up, but even as he did so he saw one of the other men throw the bone-white comb; it tumbled over and over through the air, teeth glinting.

With a breathless curse James dove to try and get past, but it was too late; the comb struck the ground and there was a flash, bright enough to blind him for long desperate seconds. Blinking away the after-image that had seared itself into his field of vision James saw the trees shooting up in front of him, faster than fireworks; it was like watching the growth of a hundred years crammed into a dense impossible minute. The trunks were thick, very close together, and the roots erupted in knots from the city street. There was no way through. Then another pounding blow to the back of his skull—

When James came to he did not at first open his eyes. He was groggy, and the throb of pain in his head was seeping more and more insistently into his awareness. From that cause and from a caution born of multiple experiences he took his time: feeling the softness of the grassy earth beneath him, the weight of metal circling his ankles and his wrists, the absence of his belt pouch; straining his ears in the silence for any sounds. But it was very quiet; only a faint noise of running water, the soft murmur of a stream, perhaps, some little way away. James opened his eyes, and pushed himself up to an uncomfortable sitting position. He was bitterly thirsty, and _god_, his head.

The bramble-cage rose to twice James' height; even were his feet and hands unbound there would be little hope of escape, either over or through. Thorns as long as needles and twice as sharp would scratch his skin to shreds, put out his eyes. James resigned himself to waiting, and wondered if MI6 knew where he was.

As it turned out, he did not have long to wait for company. In one wall of the cage the brambles unwound from each other and drew back, almost noiselessly, to create a doorway. Through it stepped the three men who had followed and attacked him. Brothers,, thought James, getting a good look at them for the first time. The brambles closed and meshed behind them, impenetrable as before.

'Nice to have you with us, Mr Bond,' the oldest of the three greeted him; it was the one who had thrown the yaga comb. 'Please, don't get up.'

'To what do I owe the pleasure, gentlemen?' The words came out more raspily from his dry throat than James would have liked.

'We have... a problem,' the man answered; his eyes were very cold and very grey, untouched by the smile upon his lips. 'And we need your assistance in solving it. Well, more correctly, we need your Quartermaster's assistance—but we trust that you will provide the leverage we need to convince him to cooperate.'

James raised his eyebrows. 'Oh, really?'

'Give him those,' the oldest brother ordered the youngest, who tossed a loaf of bread and a waterskin down in front of James. 'We'll be back later.'

As the brothers turned to leave, out of habit James weighed the possibility of a successful attack, running the swift calculations of angle and necessary force; but cuffed hand and foot as he was, weaponless against three well-armed opponents, effectively his chances were zero. He shrugged a little, grabbed for the waterskin, and settled down to see what would happen next.


	6. Two keys and an incentive

The faces of Q and M wavered slightly on the large scrying disc that hung on the wall of the main room in the brothers' house. James, tied to a chair and thoroughly gagged, could do nothing but listen while the negotiations took place.

'And what do you require from us in order to secure the safe return of our agent?' M was tight-lipped.

Once again the oldest brother, grey-eyed, black-haired, took the role of spokesperson; James wondered acerbically if the younger two ever had a chance to open their mouths. 'There is an encrypted phial that we need to access. To do so requires two keys: one public, which we already possess—' he held up an unremarkable-looking brass key '—and one private. We need someone with enough skill to recreate the private key for us, and your Quartermaster seems the most likely person to be able to do so.'

'What happened to the original creator of the private key?'

'She's dead.'

'What are the contents of this phial?'

'That is none of your business.'

'It damn well is,' retorted M with force, leaning forward and bracing his hands on the desk. 'I will not authorise this unless you tell me what is being decrypted and give me a guarantee of safe conduct for both Bond and the Quartermaster once the task is done.'

The man's lips curved up in that facsimile of a smile. 'I give you my word that the phial is harmless and your men will be released unscathed once it has been successfully recovered.'

There was the thin deadly sound of a knife being drawn from its sheath, and a split instant later James felt a fine line of cold metal pressing against the quickening pulse in his throat. He took in a deep slow breath through his nose and held himself as still as he could.

'Of course,' the oldest brother continued, very calmly, 'if my word isn't good enough for you, then you may as well say goodbye to your best agent now.'

M's face was stony. James slid his gaze slowly, carefully, over to Q. Their eyes met for the briefest moment, and then the young man returned his attention to James' captor. 'How many bits?' was all he asked.

'Two hundred and fifty-six.'

James had no idea what any of this meant, but a flicker of Q's eyebrows indicated that he was intrigued, even impressed. 'A strong key, then. Sounds challenging.' A small smile crossed Q's face. 'And if anyone can recreate it, I can.'

The next day saw James hauled ignominiously in his manacles to the entrance of the crypt that supposedly contained the phial. He found that Q was already there, kneeling with his head bent over a collection of wooden boxes. They were full of tiny bits of what looked like metal, some short and straight, some circular. The youngest brother was lounging against a nearby rock.

'Good to see you, Q,' James said. His tone was ironic, but the feeling beneath it was certainly genuine enough.

Q looked over and gave him a slight nod. 'You too, Bond. Are you all right?'

'More or less,' James answered with a grunt as the middle brother shoved him roughly against the wall of the crypt and fastened the chain to a bracket set there. He was really _very_ tired of being bound hand and foot, and looked forward to having the opportunity to express himself on the matter. He gave the brown-haired man a feral grin and hoped that opportunity would not be long in coming.

Q began to flick through a codex that he had pulled from one of the boxes. 'I assume your two older siblings have already tried to assemble the key,' he said to the youngest brother, not glancing up. 'Any particular reason why they haven't let you make the third attempt?'

The young man flushed an angry red to the roots of his straw-coloured hair. 'I _have_ tried,' he gritted out. 'It just didn't work.'

Q's head snapped around. 'Ridiculous. You expect me to believe that a third brother—a _youngest_ brother—didn't succeed at a problem his two elders failed to solve?' He made a scoffing sound. 'Pull the other one, it has bells on.'

The middle brother interjected, 'No, it's true.'

The youngest threw both him and Q a look that was pure murder; James saw that his knuckles were strained white against his skin as he gripped his belt-knife. 'Just shut the fuck up about it.'

'It's a touchy subject.' Their oldest brother had now arrived. 'Family matters can be so fraught, can't they?' He stared down at Q, impassively. 'But rest assured, Quartermaster, yours _is_ the fourth attempt, not the third. How long do you estimate it will take you?'

Q dipped a hand into one of the boxes and let a stream of metal pieces sift through his long fingers, glittering. 'Really, it's very difficult for me to say.'

'Then consider this an incentive to work quickly.'

And with a swift movement, graceful as falling water, the dark-haired man turned towards James; there was a slim flash of silver and the knife slid smoothly into and out of James' abdomen.

The shock was so great that it took a few moments for the pain of it to register; James watched the colour drain from Q's face, and felt himself begin to tremble. He slid to the ground. 'Fuck.'

'You gave your word that we would walk out of here unharmed.' Q's voice shook, but so slightly that only James could tell the difference.

'And so you shall—once you have accessed the phial for us.' The oldest brother was wiping off the knife blade with a handkerchief. 'Bond's life is in no immediate danger; I do know what I'm doing when it comes to this sort of thing. Blood loss will be relatively steady, but slow enough. He'll last a few hours, and a couple of drops of the phial's contents will heal him, when you get to it. Can you guess what it is?'

Q, still very white, took one more look at James' sweat-beaded face and began to lay out row upon row of the metallic bits upon the flagstones. 'Rapunzel tears,' he replied shortly. 'That much was obvious from the first few pages of the notes your colleague left behind.'

* * *

This chapter, like the one before, could not have been written without some very nerdy, tropey and cryptic discussion with my husband, bless him.


	7. Familiar

James' fingers were sticky with the blood that seeped, red and insistent, from the wound low in his belly. The pain had resolved itself into the background of his awareness, but he felt light-headed, and it grew difficult to focus. Q's hands continued to move so quickly, arranging and rearranging the bits of the key, playing out a melody whose only notes were the faint clink and clatter of metal pieces on the stone. His face was utterly intent upon his work.

The sun moved through the sky, a golden ball falling through the blue. James heard Q give a soft hiss of frustration. The brothers spoke amongst themselves, every now and then, in low voices. The shadows gathering at the edges of James' vision were not only those of the trees in the lengthening afternoon.

Then: '_Ah_—' With sudden certainty Q swept away some of the pieces and replaced them; they pattered down like quiet rain, faster and faster. James blinked to try and clear his vision; either he was further gone than he had thought, or were the little lines and circles actually starting to _glow_—?

There was a flash and a metallic hum, buzzing brazen in James' ears for a strange moment, and he saw that the hundreds of individual pieces had somehow melted and melded together so that Q now held up, triumphantly, a key. It was long and slim and filigreed, and the youngest brother snatched it from Q's hand with an expression of unalloyed greed.

'At last!' The black-haired one hastened forward, pulling the plain brass key from his pocket, and together the brothers inserted the keys into their respective locks, turned them, and pushed open the door of the crypt. It grated, and moved slowly, and the space behind it was in darkness.

Q sat back on his heels and ran a hand through the riot of his dark hair. The look of triumph had faded from his face and he now seemed exhausted, but he moved to James' side and knelt there, watching in silence as the other men entered the crypt, lighting their way with a lamp.

'Never seen anything quite like that before,' James said; it took some effort to get the words out. 'It was... impressive.'

Q looked down at him with dark green eyes, taking in the blood-soaked shirt. 'I'm only sorry it took me so long.' His voice was tight. 'And I wish they would bloody well hurry up.'

It was only a few minutes later that the three men came out into the daylight again, the youngest one carrying, carefully, a large cut-glass phial filled with a shimmering blue liquid. Q was on his feet in an instant; with some difficulty, James also rose, leaning back into the wall to support himself.

'You have clearly recovered the rapunzel tears,' Q said. 'Therefore I've kept my end of the bargain; it's time for you to keep yours.' He held out his hand for the phial.

But the oldest brother was shaking his head. 'I'm afraid,' he said, voice rich with insincere sorrow, 'that you have rather misplaced your trust in me.'

And then too many things happened at once.

The middle brother lurched forward, and out of pure instinct James ducked; the man roared as his fist collided brutally with the wall. But James was brought up short by the chain still fixed through the bracket. Q said, '_Bond_—' and with a strength much, much more than human he grasped the chain in his hands and broke it in two.

James did not take time to think about what he had just seen. Ignoring the pain it caused him he dove and rolled and came up into a crouch, hampered still by the cuffs at his ankles and wrists; the middle brother was turning round, looking for him, and James used the chain as a flail, swinging it out with all the force he could muster. It coiled around one of the man's legs; James pulled on it, hard, yanking them both off-balance, and the man's head cracked against the flagstones as he fell. He did not move again.

Breathing unevenly, James maneuvered himself upright, crouching still with the cold heavy weight of the chain in his hands, looking for Q and the remaining brothers. What he saw froze him to the spot with sickened dread.

The oldest brother lay sprawled, face to the sky, his throat a mess of welling crimson liquid. The youngest brother was running, hell-bent towards the haven of the house, and loping behind him was a wolf, long-limbed and lean, its fur as thick and dark as Q's own hair. Even as James watched the wolf sprang, clearing the distance in a graceful curve and knocking the young man hard to the ground. The phial fell from his hand. There was half a scream, and then silence, and the wolf turned; its eyes were green and terrifyingly familiar.


	8. Don't be a bloody fool

James gripped the chain, but did not move.

Almost between one blink and the next the wolf's form shifted, shimmered, became Q again; his mouth was bloodied, his clothes torn, a long red gash vivid in his left arm. The two men crouched there, mirrors of each other, not speaking.

After a moment, as if by mutual agreement, they both stood, slowly. Then Q went to retrieve the fallen phial—miraculously still stoppered and intact—and he crossed over to stand in front of James, keeping a couple of feet between them. James could see that Q was trembling slightly all over, as if with reaction. His own body groaned with the accumulation of injury, and exertion, and shock.

'It's not the full moon,' he gritted out, at last. 'Not even close.'

Q met his gaze unflinchingly. 'No.'

'You can control it _that much_?'

'Yes.' Q held out the bottle of blue liquid. 'Drink some of this, Bond. You won't need much, half a mouthful should do it.'

James took it, and drank, not taking his eyes from the Quartermaster. The liquid tasted faintly salty, and it left a bitter tang of minerals to linger on his tongue. He offered the rapunzel tears back to Q. 'You look like you could use some, too.'

Barely had he finished speaking when he realised that the aftermath of adrenalin and pain was washing out from him; looking down in wonder he saw the wound in his abdomen begin to knit itself together, leaving at last no mark but a patch of clean new skin.

Q was shortly examining his own arm with a critical eye, tentatively rubbing at the scar that ran pinkly from his shoulder almost to his elbow. He shrugged philosophically. 'Well. It was a silver blade. Vexing, but I'm lucky to still have the use of this arm, I suppose.'

'Q?' James held out his hands. 'Get these sodding things off me, will you?'

A hint of a smile; Q traced a fingertip over the heavy iron cuffs. 'Now for these, I will need a key.' He searched the oldest brother's pockets, and soon found a ring of keys; the smallest one unlocked the cuffs and James let them fall with relief. The skin at his ankles and wrists, bruised and rubbed by the metal, had also healed.

He found that Q was watching him still, and something like pain was drawn in lines on his thin face. Even as James registered it the look was smoothed away and replaced with a tinge of mockery.

'Well, 007,' Q said crisply, sardonically, 'it's been a pleasure, for the most part. Would you like to take me into custody now, or give me a head start?'

'Don't be a bloody fool,' James said; the words jerked out rough. He raised his hand as if to brush Q's cheek, but caught the movement short, without touching. Then he looked away, around; there was too much, under that skin and inside that bone, for now. 'There's a well, over there. Let's clean you up.'

And Q allowed himself, this time, to be led.


	9. A calculated risk

Between them James and Q were able to clean the site to a level that James deemed acceptable. They worked in silence. When it was done, cautiously they returned to the brothers' house to retrieve Q's confiscated equipment. They drank water, and ate what they could find in the poorly-supplied kitchen; a parody of normalcy that stretched them white with strain.

They agreed upon a story for the report.

Within hours James and Q were back at MI6, deep in the familiar tunnels. When they separated for individual debriefing their eyes met, and then fell, and as James followed M he resisted the temptation to look back.

It was nearly a week before James could bring himself to walk into Q Branch again. The memory and yes, the terror of Q's transformation weighed on him, a warning heavy and dull at the back of his mind: danger, keep away. And yet—and yet. He missed Q's company, his conversation, his cock.

_The hell with it_, James thought. He'd never been one to shirk the danger, anyway.

'007.' Q looked up from the codex in which he was making marginal notes with a long white quill. His tone was carefully even, but there was a tentative edge of welcome in his green eyes.

James leant against the wall, in his usual position. 'Q.'

The Quartermaster returned to his work for a few more minutes and then closed the codex, laying the quill neatly on top of it. 'You've been going to the Infirmary as I instructed?'

James rolled his eyes. 'Yes, Q, although why exactly you require that I go every day for a week—'

Q gave him an exasperated look. 'You know why, and I've been doing the same. Ingestion of an unknown substance: we have to be sure that there are no unexpected, untoward after-effects, no slow-acting poisons—'

'Oh for christ's sake, Q, the rapunzel tears _saved my life_.' James scrubbed a hand over his face. 'You seemed happy enough for us to drink them at the time.'

'It was a calculated risk—'

'Why should there be any risk from something like that anyway—unless, of course,' James added with heavy sarcasm, 'whoever developed them intends to insist on everyone being healthy before they're broken?'

He watched the irritated drum of delicate fingers on the desk. But then: 'Very well,' Q conceded unexpectedly, with a lopsided smile. 'Perhaps I am being over-cautious. One more visit tomorrow, and then I'll agree that the rapunzel tears are probably completely safe.'

James turned his head to partially hide his own smile. 'Glad to hear it.'

A pause. Then James said, 'Q—' at the same time as Q said, 'Bond—'

And the scrying disc on Q's desk lit up, forcing James to stifle his annoyance as he heard Alec's voice. 'Are you there, Q?' _Typical_, James thought.

At once Q turned around, all cool competence and the rawness gone. 'I'm here, 006; sitrep, please.'

'I've made the drop and acquired the package. Calling my extraction team now.'

'Good job. I'll be in touch with the coordinates of the location for the beans shortly. Once the infrastructure is fully grown we'll be able to send in the rest of the team for Operation GIANT.'

'I always knew stalking was your game, Alec.' James smirked over Q's shoulder.

'Is that you, James? Sod off,' Alec replied without rancour, and the light in the scrying disc winked out.

James was suddenly all too aware of how close to Q he was standing. Close enough to feel the warmth of the young man's body; for it to seem the most natural thing in the world to press his lips against the smooth white skin of Q's neck, in the narrow gap between his collar and his curling hair; to set his hands on the Quartermaster's hips and push him forward against the desk, wanting. James heard Q's breath catch as the young man leant back into him.

'Not here.'

'Then where, and when?' The words were a growl in James' chest.

'Tonight.' Q twisted around and his eyes were dark as deep water under leaves. 'Come to my house.'

* * *

Note: Bonus points for those who spot the Princess Bride reference...


	10. We just take what we can get

There was a bite of autumn in the air that night, though not yet enough to tempt James to draw up his red hood. The last hint of sunset had disappeared, and he lit the lamp that he carried. Eyes blinked in the trees. He moved on.

When at last he reached Q's house he found that it was small, little more than a cabin, set well back within the encircling arms of a high thorny hedge. Not bramble or hawthorn, James realised. Roses. In the pale circle of lamplight he saw the scarlet scatter of petals on the ground, the green hips just starting to swell. And near the top, one perfect full bloom, balanced on the perilous edge of overblown. James stretched up, and grasped the stem, and picked it.

A sliver of brightness in the curtain crack, a single lantern burning by the door. James knocked, three times.

The door opened, and James entered, glancing around with interest. A fire danced low in the grate, and at the other end of the room a long wooden table was burdened with odds and ends of alchemical equipment.

Q looked at the rose in James' hands and raised a single eyebrow. 'Those come at a price, you know.'

James met his gaze evenly. 'I'll pay it.'

And Q smiled—really, genuinely smiled, the most unguarded expression James had ever seen on his face. 'I think,' he replied softly, as he reached out to take the flower, 'you already have.'

Then he frowned, seeing the deep lacerations the thorns had left on James' hand. Flicked his eyes to James' belt, which was empty. 'You came here unarmed.'

'Yes.'

Q shook his head as he turned away; he seemed unsure whether to be amused or outraged. 'You're a bloody idiot, Bond.'

James grinned. 'Well, I love you too, Q.'

Q froze in the act of setting the rose down on the table, and James caught his breath for a long moment, wondering how badly he had misjudged the situation. He had thought—

Then the young man picked up a small pot and came back. Taking James' callused and bloody hand in his own pale one, he began to smooth an olive-coloured salve into the wounds.

'Ash,' he said. 'That's my name. You may as well know.'

Something kicked over in James' chest; he raised his free hand and cupped Q's face, brushing his thumb over the sharp cheekbone. 'Then you'd better call me James.'

'All right then,' Q said, matter-of-factly. But he smiled again, and released James' hand with a last caress of cool fingers. 'Would you like some wine?'

They settled on the rug in front of the fireplace, and James ran his fingers through the dark silken hair that spilled into his lap where Q's—Ash's; that would take some getting used to—head lay pillowed.

With the wine rich and rough on his tongue James said, 'You know I can't offer happily ever after.'

Q blinked up at him. 'We both know there's no such thing,' he said, 'not for people like us.' He stretched up to curve his fingers behind James' neck, lifting his own head to meet James with a hungry, searching kiss.

'True,' James admitted. 'So—we just take what we can get, is that it?'

'That,' said Q, pulling himself upright and moving to straddle James' lap, with the firelight gleaming bright in his eyes, 'is precisely what I intend to do.'

* * *

Thanks everyone for sticking with me through this story, which started out with the intention of being just a drabble or so, and yeah, we can all see how that plan turned out. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it 3


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